Emotional Training Helps Kids Fight Depression : NPR.
This is a brilliant effort at nipping the downward spiral in the bud when children are at their most formative, and it is definitely running parallel to what I am trying to work on with my son.
» Continue reading “Emotional Training Helps Kids Fight Depression : NPR”
I was daydreaming just now, thinking about a conversation I had earlier with another parent. We were discussing the issues his son was having in school, how amotivated his child was and their struggle to get him to make an effort. It got me to thinking about what motivates our children to achieve and then mentally, automatically rephrased it as what motivates our children to make an effort.
» Continue reading “An Open Letter to My Children”
Mind – When Parents Are Too Toxic to Tolerate – NYTimes.com.
I wholeheartedly agree. I also think it’s important to protect your children from toxic familial relationships so they learn to model healthy relationships filled with love. I have been estranged from both my parents and my only brother for several years now and it’s not a decision that I regret. I only regret its necessity and harbor some feelings of anger, resentment, and sadness about not having healthy relationships with people who should be in my life but for their inability to respect my right to my own.
» Continue reading “When Parents Are Too Toxic to Tolerate – NYTimes.com”
A Push For Colleges To Prioritize Mental Health : NPR.
When I was diagnosed as bipolar in 1997, I was diagnosed by a college psychiatrist. My first real experience with a psychiatrist and navigating the ins and outs of having a diagnosis and trying to find a treatment plan that would allow me to function was a key defining moment in my life. Reducing these services will only result in more students dropping out or opting out of college as an option. At this stage in life, at this age, university mental health services are often the only option students have for ever-increasing emotional problems.
» Continue reading “A Push For Colleges To Prioritize Mental Health : NPR”
Because I did. She became more concerned about money than about me. in the middle of a session where I shares some concerns about money and in particular, mounting expenses associated with my son’s broken wrist, she actually stopped me to ask me “but how will you pay for these sessions?”
It got worse when she called me on the day she thought was our next appointment (which turned out to be incorrect) to cancel because my insurance had rejected her last $60 claim. I told her it was going to happen because of the way my insurance works, just as I told her I had money in my healthcare flexible spending account specifically for this purpose. I would have happily arrived at her office with my check except for her complete insensitivity and coldness in calling to cancel on the DAY OF my appointment. When I explained to her first that our appointment wasn’t that day, she said oh okay, then you can pay me and I’ll see you then.
» Continue reading “DId I mention I fired my therapist?”
His words make me feel beautiful – CNN.com.
I felt this when I read it. I can only hope that when I have lived as long as the author, my husband will feel the same way.
“I don’t believe that inner beauty is sufficient in this cruel world. That’s the pap one tells a child. I don’t believe that positive thinking improves your skin tone or that loving or being loved changes the shape of your nose or restores the thickness and color of hair, but I do know that there is a way of being beautiful, even as age takes its toll, that has something to do with the spirit filling with joy, something to do with the union with another human being, with the sense of having done well at something enormously important, like making happy a man who has made you happy often enough.”
Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class – CNN.com.
This is the ultimate in being your own best advocate. When you can’t find answer, continue looking, even if you have to go it alone. I think it especially highlights the need for quality control measures in pathology and medicine. We are allowed to routinely get second opinions on major decisions, but what about when lab results yield little help?
» Continue reading “Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class – CNN.com”
Gay soldier: Don’t fire me – amFIX – CNN.com Blogs.
This isn’t a GLBT blog, per se, but in the last few weeks it’s where my head has been, as more states struggle with the idea of equality. This eloquent and poignant letter from an Army serviceman who was fired for honesty leaves me outraged, and it should leave you outraged too. Repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Someone recently related to me that they had received a diagnosis but weren’t sure they accepted it. I have seen this scenario played out in the bipolar community many times: “But I am not psychotic/manic/suicidal” etc. The “problem” with diagnosis, with any kind of labeling or categorization of a person’s personality or identity or deeply ingrained mental characteristics, is that it is an incomplete way to communicate information.
» Continue reading “Part 1: Diagnosis, Misdiagnosis, and Manifestations”
